This Must Be the Place

‘Work with me here,’ Robyn muttered to the lift doors. ‘If you just stay shut, we don’t have to go.’

Jack motioned to their three fellow riders: a baby, a toddler, and a young child. ‘Yep. I’ll take being stuck in here with them over leaving.’ And he meant it.

Maeve hammered on the release button. The doors snapped open. She charged into the hall, a mini riot. Toddlers don’t observe your ceremony, Robyn reminded herself. She doesn’t want to hold this moment into her palms, still and quiet, and of course she doesn’t: we teach children to burst bubbles.

‘We just need to do one last check,’ said Jack, to any child who would listen, ‘say goodbye to the flat, and then we’re going to grandma and grandad’s. Okay? The movers are waiting so we can’t take too long.’

‘I want to do a poo in a FIRE from a HELICOPTER,’ contributed Anya, the eldest.

No response from the others. Seth just leaned forward and bit the bar of his pushchair, leaking an improbable amount of drool. His main worry was not expectant movers, it was teething. Robyn looked at him, and the now-whirling Maeve, and a neon sign fizzed in her brain.

They won’t remember this.

It’s physiologically improbable, if not impossible. The childhood they’ll remember will happen in a city they don’t know yet, in a house which hasn’t been found.

The fact stood brash and out of place in her mind. She looked at them: you will never consciously know this place that made you.

The key slid too easily into the lock. Betrayed again - like the time it forgot itself for a hundred-mile drive from her parents’ house. Dad had - just about - voluntarily ferried it back, all the while plotting no doubt how he could brandish it in his wedding speech as an emblem of their chaotic forgetfulness. Usually it stuck in the lock, but not today. Robyn hesitated on the threshold as fizzing neon lights flashed: last time ever. Ever.

The heavy fire door swung closed behind them, sending them into a darkness more appropriate to midnight than mid-afternoon. Jack felt for the switch: lights on.

The hallway was empty but for Robyn and Jack. They looked at each other in confusion.

‘Where are the kids?’ he asked, eyes darting around. ‘Weren’t they right here?’

Robyn looked at the door, the switch, the expanse of wall that looked so large, and so blank, like it belonged in a photography studio.

‘The key hooks are missing,’ she said. ‘From underneath the light.’

‘Key hooks?’ said Jack. ‘What about our children?’

Robyn began looking quite studiously in the utility cupboard.

‘Anya’s hardly going to be behind the washing machine, is she?’ said Jack, throwing up his hands in frustration.

She paused, seeming to be calculating something.

‘We don’t have any children.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack, frantically jamming the door handle. No luck. He tried the lock, which rotated uselessly. ‘Fuck. We’re locked in. Shit. I’ll call Ali and Dara before Maeve gets loose.’ He took out his phone.

Robyn had always felt something like this might happen.

‘They’re not out there,’ she said. The hallway was silent. ‘We don’t even know Ali and Dara - you won’t have their number. What’s the date on your phone, love?’

He checked it.

‘It’s the day we moved in.’

She shook her head. ‘I knew the key was being weird.’

The flat itself seemed to reflect the enormity of them being cast back in time. It felt cavernous, as they began to move through it, searching for something which might release them. Each step only released more reminders of entering their first home together. And there, intermingled with the anxiety of the deeply strange, was the thrill of possibility.

There, disassembled, was the wardrobe with the mirrored door, which they’d argued over whilst packing. Being unable to take it apart, Jack had found a simple solution to the problem: leaving the house. Robyn took the thing apart in outrage - nearly bested by a cam lock. She took the thing down, and they'd built it back up: his flouncing out becoming one of those fortifying jokes that makes you stronger together.

Beside it, the second bedroom held nothing but an electric piano. The expanse of yet-to-be-used space stretched out before them, expectant, as if held in the moments a concert pianist sits down, pauses, hands hovering above the keys.

‘Surely there’s something we have to do…’ said Robyn.

They looked around for a sign, a symbol, an obvious puzzle, and found nothing - naturally, the whole place was a blank canvas, corner to corner. As they walked, their footsteps echoed, and sounded echoes of that night, in their first shared home.

‘Hey, maybe we have to do what we did,’ he said, searching for something on his phone. ‘Remember this?’

A kick drum sounded. Then a guitar: bright, plucked, cleaner than dawn, followed by delicate, blown glass synthesisers with a skipping melody - the tentative happiness of This Must Be the Place by Talking Heads.

He wiggled his hips - not serious, not unserious either.

Home is where I want to be

Pick me up and turn me round

‘Oh,’ she said, beginning to move to the beat. ‘Maybe we get to do it all over again?’

They joined hands and hips and flitted as the melody flickered, singing guesses to the lyrics which sounded like they might just belong. Maybe it was the delirium of dislocation, but she felt a glimpse of something unformed, bare - a clear day. They skipped around the pile of all their belongings thrown into the middle of the open plan kitchen-living room, right back in that day. The first day.

A polaroid camera lay on top of all the stuff: one of the modern ones made to look retro. In the next year, the batteries would leak and destroy the camera, and despite meaning to, they still hadn’t replaced it.

‘Rescue?’ she said, holding it up.

Jack shrugged. ‘May as well.’

‘Quick pic?’ she asked.

Jack ran round between the stuff and the patio doors, which opened onto a balcony looking out onto the cityscape. They were on the third floor, right in the middle: not so low that the view was obscured by nearby houses, but high enough that they just about edged over their neighbour’s rooftops to see the expanse of sky. Maybe the people on the fifth floor could afford a family home in this city.

He launched himself into a starfish. The shutter snapped, printed a photo, which Robyn pocketed.

They heard the front door click. The lock.

Their eyes met - had they heard…?

They ran.

Jack wrenched open the handle. There was no light in the corridor outside, and it wasn’t the home they knew. It was also completely empty.

‘They’re not here,’ he said. ‘Anya, Maeve?’

Nothing.

They were at the new door before they knew it, although Robyn could see it wasn’t new. Number thirty-three. Stuck between two doors: then, and, whatever lay behind this one.

Jack opened it.

Warmth radiated from the doorway and they were greeted by cheers and open arms: the same place, but full of people. Close friends, old friends, not-seen-for-ages friends. The sound of Eisbaer by Grauzone spilled into the corridor.

‘Trust you guys to be late to your own afterparty!’

A woman with a blue suit and a coiffured rouge inferno pulled them into the flat. Cleo had, on the sly, elevated the whole engagement party from what they’d planned (a casual corner in a pub), to an Occasion. She’d adorned and adored them. After last orders rang, they’d brought everything home: baskets of sunflowers lined the hallway and the ceiling was covered in oversized confetti-filled balloons. There were friends and empties everywhere: bottles clinked, reflecting the light.

Cleo handed them each a tiny polar bear and pushed them through the crowd.

‘EISBAER!’ they all shouted, madly waving the bears, even when the refrain in the song stopped.

‘This is all for you!’ Cleo shouted, squeezing them into an embrace, one under each arm. ‘Look around you. Everyone’s here for you.’

‘Here,’ Robyn said, handing her the camera. ‘Take a photo of us.’

She took the camera, snapped, handed it back. Robyn blew a kiss and pocketed the photo.

‘Love you.’

A burst of memory - Robyn ran to the craft drawer and grabbed a pencil.

‘We gotta go,’ Jack urged her.

‘I know.’

As she made her way back through the packed hallway, she jabbed each of the balloons, popping them and freeing the confetti inside, catching and throwing it again as it fell, making the air shimmer. They’d be discovering that confetti for years to come: still, and most of all, when they were packing their things for storage.

The door opened immediately, onto another unfamiliar dark corridor.

‘Still not here,’ said Jack, rubbing his jaw.

‘We’ll find them. Just keep going,’ said Robyn.

They rounded several dark corners, narrower than before, before coming across another door - theirs, again.

They ran in, but Robyn stopped short. Her body held her in place - a deep, intense pressure anchoring her, almost pulling her to the floor.

‘Oh, fuck.’

‘What?’ Jack turned. ‘Oh, fuck.’

‘Oh, fuck!’ said a little voice. Anya, half her actual age, rounded the corner, crashing into Robyn with violent affection. As ever, she clutched her toy rabbit Radi, just as well-loved but half as shabby.

‘You’re pregnant,’ said Jack.

‘I’m having a baby,’ said Robyn, trying to stay calm. ‘I’m actually having Maeve again.’

She ruffled Anya’s hair. ‘Hey baba.’

‘You can do it.’ said Jack. 'Er, not that I want you to have to,' he added swiftly. 'But you can.'

‘Wouldn’t be my first choice,’ she said, taking a deep breath and moving slowly along the corridor, a hand on each wall. They seemed to have inched in on themselves since the party.

In the kitchen-diner-disco-nursery, Jack rushed to move chairs out of her way, and with her toes she cleared her path of dolls house furniture, building blocks and plastic animals. She couldn’t see her feet, but she’d learned to walk differently since living with children.

She lowered herself onto a yoga ball and looked out the window to a skyline caught in a criss-cross grid. Netting spanned their balcony to the one above. They’d accidentally ended up with the world’s most daring cat, and in hindsight, realised they loved her enough to try and stop her throwing herself off the balcony. But the net couldn’t hold forever.

Another contraction. She fixed her gaze beyond the netting at the sky, heavy with familiar grey clouds, a wintry blanketing of the city. As she breathed, held motionless by the pain, she saw them part, a divine white over the monochrome landscape. The pain faded.

‘Last photo, just the three of us?’ said Jack.

She nodded. ‘Let’s go before this one starts up again,’ she said, putting a hand on Maeve-to-be.

Anya was in her bedroom (no longer a room for guests, music or work), had picked up a toy electric guitar, and was giving it some on the whammy bar.

‘Anya!’ called Jack. She came running, hand in hand with Radi. She plugged herself in between them; this child was powered on hugs. The camera clicked and fed out its photo.

‘Oh bloody hell, another one’s coming,’ said Robyn, feeling her middle harden, the muscles galvanising themselves for another wave. ‘Let’s get out of here. Come on baba.’

She led Anya to the front door. She fought the urge to cry out with every step, as the pain rose - she stumbled - had to keep going - with one hand in Anya’s and the other on the door, she tore it open -

Onto another dark corridor. The pain vanished.

‘At least we’ve got one child with us this time,’ said Jack, as they followed the corridor round, now such a tight squeeze they had to go single file and a little hunched.

This time when they pushed the door, it barely opened (the culprit: a stray shoe).They shoved it, to be met with the kind of cacophony which could summon a parent from the most mesmeric depths of a dream realm. The unmistakable sound of a tiny riot. As they entered, they edged past the pushchair, the bookshelves, the shoes which eschewed the shoe-rack to live in permanent residence in the hall.

Anya, aged four, legged it past them to find her sister.

‘Maeve, Maeve!’ she cried. ‘It’s Radi’s birthday today! We’re making him carrot cake!’

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Robyn.

‘I know, that rabbit has more birthdays than the King,’ said Jack, rolling his eyes.

‘Not that. I’m extremely pregnant again,’ said Robyn. ‘Why won’t time leave my cervix alone?’

‘You’re cerv-ing time, here in this loop…’

He grinned but his joke hung in the air. They hadn’t considered the possibility of never getting out.

‘There will be a way,’ she said. If she could wrestle that colossal wardrobe apart and put it back together, she could get them out of the past.

There was wailing in the kitchen. They shimmied past the bathroom, which had become a sliding tile puzzle of furniture, cat accoutrements, nappy bin, bath toys. They moved towards the living room: the door seeming to shrink as they got closer.

Anya and Maeve were leaning across the table, imperilling themselves and a sumptuous carrot cake, for which they were mixing glacé icing. Or, in Maeve’s case, decanting icing, smashing her hand in the puddle, and palming it onto her face like war paint, which is what all the commotion was about. Anya and Radi had been spattered in blue food colouring, which really was a hate crime when green (her favourite) was on the table.

‘Radi hates blue!’ she protested, as Jack saved him from his unthinkable horror with a wet wipe.

Every bowl and spoon in the kitchen had been deployed in a joyous clutter. Three children: present. Two loudly alive before her eyes, and the other - she winced - doing a gold-medal winning floor routine from pelvis to ribs.

‘Photo?’ said Jack.

‘We can’t cut Radi’s birthday short,’ said Robyn.

‘Shall we get this thing decorated then?’ asked Jack.

Unlike the first time when they had made Radi his birthday cake, neither of them cared about the blue food colouring steadily dripping from the table to the floor, about the icing sugar dust which settled in their hair and made their skin sticky, or about whatever curious fingers had messed with the oven clock, which didn’t appear to be displaying a time in the past, present or future.

Radi’s original cake had little fondant carrots, equally and carefully arranged. This one was marble-effect slime, and all the better for it. They lit his candles, sang happy birthday, and then Jack grabbed the camera - captured them all, before the candles went out.

Anya and Maeve ate the icing, touching nothing else, as Robyn knew they would.

The same way as they had, the first time round.

The same way she’d always, always remember they had. Camera or no camera. She didn’t need to sit with memory to know that it wasn’t a rerun. The loss was still there, whether she was at the table or not. And somehow, that made things easier.

She heard the front door unlock.

‘Mama, it’s Radi’s birthday,’ said Anya, holding the rabbit up to her face and stroking her with its paw. ‘Why are you crying?’

‘Because Radi’s birthday is very special to me,’ she said.

‘Come on,’ said Jack. ‘We’ve got to go and find your brother.’

‘Brother?’ said Anya, looking at Robyn’s belly and clutching her face. ‘Oh no. This is bad news.’

Robyn laughed, took her hand, and Jack scooped up Maeve, heading back to the corridor. It was dark, labyrinthine, and this time they had to crawl through it, before reaching a door so miniscule it looked like a trap.

Jack paused before he tried the handle.

‘If I’m nine months pregnant again, I won’t fit in the place…’ warned Robyn, but as the door opened, she could see Seth's pushchair on the other side, his smiling eyes peeking round the side. She crawled to his side - Jack too, both of them awkwardly hugging the sodden pushchair with Anya, like a supermagnet suddenly between them, Maeve surrounding them in a careening stampede.

‘Okay you two. Why did we come here?’ asked Jack.

‘BANANAS!’ said Maeve.

‘To say goodbye to the flat,’ said Anya.

‘You ready to dance?’ said Jack, as he got out his phone, unclipping Seth from the chair.

Once again, the kick drum started and they started to dance - of course they did - down the corridor and in the rooms that now, free of their stuff, had space, space to let the air flow, to let the future in.

Hi yo, I got plenty of time

Hi yo, you got light in your eyes

The evening sun shone into the apartment as the song gently set them down: children ran, Robyn and Jack swayed with the wide-eyed melody, came together to once again dance in an embrace, chest to chest.

Here, this elevated space, which had been somebody's before, and would be somebody else's after, had lent itself to them to be stacked from floor to ceiling with bits and bobs, bickering and bliss.

But as she wove hands with Jack and they made an archway for their children to dance through, Robyn knew that for all their goodbyes - there, in the corners, in the cracks between the floorboards, maybe even in the walls which held jokes and wails and nonsense and melodies - there still lay the confetti, irrepressible, neverending. A testament to their life, and all its everyday explosions.